The entire shot is "sketched" using 3D modeling software, describing who is going to be in what position when the camera is in a certain spot.

The "bullet time" room is set up with bright green walls, floors, and ceiling, while a series of identical digital cameras are positioned in holes behind movable bright green panels. Computer-guided lasers are used to place each camera as precisely as possible, based on the computer-generated "sketch". High-speed full-motion cameras may be placed at either end of the sequence.

The actor or actors are rigged up with wires, if necessary, in the center of the room. The cameras are all fired in sequence by a single computer, coordinated down to the millisecond. The entire take lasts for only a couple of seconds in real time, if that.

Since the digital cameras can only be spaced so close together, computer software is used to interpolate the missing frames to produce a smooth effect.

3D modeling software is used to create a virtual background for the shot, based on photos of the actual room. The "sketch" is used to move a virtual camera around this room to exactly match the positions of the digital cameras.

The background and actors are composited together, frame by frame, to produce the complete shot.

End result: a few hundred man-hours and computer hours to produce between three and fifteen seconds of eye candy. Of course, it falls to the director to make sure they were hours well-spent; special effects are only as good as the story around it.

The goal of BulletTime is essentially the same goal of slow-motion, to allow viewers to better interpret the smaller/faster elements of an actionscene. BulletTime works better than slow motion in cases as it allows the camera to be moved while the slow-motion action takes place. As an example, in the movie 'The Matrix' the rooftop scene where Neo dodges a volley of bullets from an Agent's Desert Eagle is easy to comprehend because of the action running at around 30 times slower than real-time. If you now imagine this scene played through at full speed, you would miss the fine detail in the scene because the bullets, already very small, move way too fast to be captured on camera or for us to see. As a result it would look like Neo is just falling over, and quite frankly wouldnt be worth putting in the movie.